{"id":2915,"date":"2024-10-15T21:17:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T21:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/rfk-jr-suggests-hell-have-a-significant-role-on-agriculture-and-health-policy-if-trump-is-elected\/"},"modified":"2024-10-15T21:17:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T21:17:50","slug":"rfk-jr-suggests-hell-have-a-significant-role-on-agriculture-and-health-policy-if-trump-is-elected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/rfk-jr-suggests-hell-have-a-significant-role-on-agriculture-and-health-policy-if-trump-is-elected\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr. suggests he’ll have a significant role on agriculture and health policy if Trump is elected"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a> is suggesting he will have significant influence on American agriculture policy if Donald Trump<\/a> is elected president, the latest in a series of roles he has envisioned for himself in a second Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist<\/a> and environmentalist who ran for president as an independent before endorsing Trump<\/a>, on Monday posted a video on social media that he filmed outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorporate interests have hijacked the USDA dietary guidelines to make natural unprocessed foods merely an afterthought. That\u2019s one reason why 70% of the American diet now consists of ultraprocessed food. We\u2019re going to change that,\u201d Kennedy said, before listing off a series of policy ideas that would seem to run counter to much of what Trump\u2019s Agriculture Department did in his first administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Donald Trump gets me inside the building I\u2019m standing outside of right now, it won\u2019t be this way anymore. American agriculture will come roaring back, and so will American health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump campaign has said in a statement that formal discussions of who would serve in a second Trump administration are \u201cpremature.\u201d But the former president himself has said at recent rallies that RFK Jr. is someone who could help his administration if he wins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will make America healthy again. You know who\u2019s going to do that? RFK Jr. He\u2019s got some good ideas,\u201d Trump said at a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The prospect of Kennedy\u2019s influencing a wide array of federal policy has raised alarm bells among advocates of sound science. Public health experts have pointed to Kennedy’s pivotal role in spreading false information<\/a> and sowing fear around the world about vaccines, as well as conspiracy theories about technology like 5G. While there are rare instances when people have severe reactions to vaccines, the billions of doses administered globally provide real-world evidence that they are safe. The World Health Organization says vaccines prevent as many as 5 million deaths<\/a> each year.<\/p>\n

Trump, who is locked in a tight contest for the presidency with Democrat Kamala Harris, embraced Kennedy\u2019s endorsement in August after the scion of the famous Democratic political family suspended his third-party bid. He had built an unusually strong base for an independent candidate, propelled by anti-establishment voters and vaccine skeptics who have followed his anti-vaccine work since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Although public polls didn\u2019t provide a clear indication that he is having an outsized impact on support for either major-party candidate, there was some evidence that Kennedy\u2019s staying in the race would hurt Trump more than Harris. In an AP-NORC survey conducted in July, about half of Republicans had a favorable view of Kennedy, compared to about 3 in 10 Democrats and a similar share of independents.<\/p>\n

When endorsing Trump, Kennedy suggested that Trump had offered him a job if the former president returns to the White House, but neither he nor Trump offered details. Before the endorsement, the Kennedy campaign told the HBO show \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d in August that the two had discussed \u201cthe possibility of a Cabinet position \u2014 HHS,\u201d referring to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other agencies.<\/p>\n

Kennedy has made a series of videos this month in which he says that he plans to exercise his influence over a wide range of policies if Trump wins.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Agriculture Department \u2014 which Kennedy posted about Monday, the day of his mother, Ethel Kennedy’s, funeral<\/a> \u2014 is the primary agency in charge of support for farmers, animal and plant health and the safety of meat, poultry and eggs. It oversees federal nutrition programs that provide food to low-income people, pregnant women and young children and school lunches.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s background as an environmental lawyer isn\u2019t likely to be broadly popular in agriculture, however. He has challenged the widespread use of herbicides like Roundup and the large commercial farms and animal feeding operations that dominate the industry because they are the most efficient way to raise crops and animals. Bayer, which makes the Roundup weedkiller, has been hit with tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging it causes cancer, an accusation the company denies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were Trump, I\u2019d try to get him to shut up as quick as possible. You really think RFK would sell very well in farm country?\u201d said John Hansen, the longtime president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.<\/p>\n

Many of the policies pursued by Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary during Trump\u2019s first term, favored the massive farms and livestock operations that Kennedy rails against.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 1, Kennedy posted a video filmed in front of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he said he planned to work on issues of health and the environment. Four days later, he posted that he was partnering with Trump \u201cto transform our nation\u2019s food, fitness, air, water, soil and medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur big priority will be to clean up the public health agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those agencies have become sock puppets for the industries that they\u2019re supposed to regulate,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

Last week, he targeted the Food and Drug Administration in a video filmed outside the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get on the inside of FDA to make America healthy again,\u201d he said, ending the video with the line: \u201cGet Donald Trump in the White House in November, and me over at FDA.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Kennedy spokesperson did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Brian Hughes, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said it was too early to say who would serve in a Trump administration, but that a Trump-Vance transition leadership group was preparing for \u201cwhat comes after the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Haag, a Trump supporter who farms about 2,000 acres and raises about 6,000 pigs a year near the small town of Emington, Illinois, said he doesn\u2019t think Kennedy would be a good pick for the Agriculture Department, but he\u2019s not going to worry about it too much at this stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine it would be good, but until Trump actually says he\u2019s going to do that, I probably wouldn\u2019t actually let it hold much water either,\u201d Haag said.<\/p>\n

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children\u2019s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suggesting he will have significant influence on American agriculture policy if Donald Trump is elected president, the latest in a series of roles he has envisioned for himself in a second Trump administration. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and environmentalist who ran for president as an independent before endorsing Trump, on<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump-election-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/nTBGiJBSgAjj.n60Fs0i9A--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD04MDA-\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/ap.org\/eacb6b0cd7ac544a7e12c58fb7d8237c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}